Perfect Day

What constitutes the perfect day?

Today came pretty close. My two Canadian cohorts and myself took a trip to Leeds Castle (in Kent, not Leeds...) and took a million pictures to prove it. The sun was crisp, the air was breathable and the ducks were demanding. We spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to find the centre of the maze (it really is difficult to guide someone who is still lost, once you've reached the top) and soaked up the history of our surroundings.

Leeds Castle makes me want to be a princess, a real one. It makes me want to sleep in thick, rich silk bedding and makes me pine for romance and purity and love and all the things the world seems to disown these days. It makes me want to wear a rich, dark green, velvet gown, with tiny silver detailing around the neck, and swan about gracefully from room to room. It makes me want to read and play piano and look demure all day (in the same way that Sissinghurst Castle Garden makes me want to be Vita Sackville-West or Virginia Woolf, striding across endless green fields, speaking the words of my latest social-commentary out loud to myself, in order to establish a suitable rhythm to put on paper...).

All this makes me long for a time when it was okay to spend an afternoon enjoying the view, without having to have a pen and paper, or my phone handy in case I remember something I have to do. Or a time when people behind me in the queue in Boots didn't sigh and swear when I'm only trying to find out how many Advantage Card points you have to use up. Or a time when lunch hour was still an hour and it was considered inappropriate for people to stand at their front-window in their pyjamas (or be seen, by anyone, in your night attire). Did such times ever exist?

In particular, the dining room at the castle nudged gently at my imagination and had me in a fitted royal-blue, square neck dress with my back straight, shoulders back, and in the midst of some wholly engaging dinner conversation on a saphire-black november night, lit only two dignified and elaborately supported candles, and a crackling log fire. Today I wore jeans, a blue hooded top, a too-big hat and emo glasses and tried to trick my friend's camera into capturing my head in a rat trap. I felt like Where's Wally.

Nevertheless, the day was perfect. I saved a friend from an eternity lost in green hedges and I laughed and grumbled with my sidekick. The lake was fantastic, the photos (except the ones with me in, as it is a fact that I look unspeakably dreadful in photographs) were amazing and the serenity was inescapable.

Here's to more days of peace and serenity. :)